starkingenuity | The Not So Silent Hill

Loki had learned quite a lot from his assault on New York, from the loss of the woman he had always thought of as his natural mother, from his two years in captivity. He wasn't even sure why he had done all of this. Revenge was...pathetic. And still, he wanted it. He wanted Thor to suffer. And, more than that, he wanted to suffer himself for the person he had lost and the one he felt was shoved down his throat.

The masochism was perhaps his greatest downfall.

When Alessa finally attacked him, the Hulk spending a few extra moments mowing down the dead guard, Loki let his own rage go. The ripples might not be enough to affect Alessa or the Hulk, but they did send Thor right back where he came from. One attack, one heartwrenching scream, and Loki had had enough.

Well, that and the Hulk was close enough to swing him around for fun.

And oh, did the Hulk swing him around. Instead of before, there was real, concrete rage directed specifically at Loki. The Hulk was smashing.

And Alessa got the amulet, the chain still glowing bright red with her heat. She looked down at her corpses with a smile. "Let Bruce deal with him. He has the right." And Alessa would have her turn later.

Instead, she turned towards the hole Thor's body left in the wall. "Thor? Am I supposed to break his, or is taking it away enough?" She was probably going to break the amulet anyway, because she liked breaking things.

Other than more debris and a lot of grunting, there wasn't entirely too much of Loki actually visible in the cloud of mess the Hulk was making of him. Gods, however, seemed to be rather hard to kill, even for rage beasts like Banner's Other Guy. That was more lucky for Alessa than for the Trickster who had given himself away for no other reason than his own morbid, masochistic hubris.

At least Thor was not much of a threat now unless Alessa decided to command him to be otherwise. Yes, he still fought against the amulet's hold but it was more subtle and subdued now that he wasn't being forced to attack his allies. The Thunderer's voice was stunted when he answered his new master. "I believe it must be destroyed."

The same seemed to be true for many a magical item.

It was their singular flaw.

Alessa raised the amulet to smash against the wall... then hesitated.

She looked down at the amulet, listening with a small smile as the Hulk smashed Loki into the ground.

"You want to do the honors?" she asked Thor. To her, it was actually a nice gesture. Thor was the one who was controlled by it, so he should get to destroy it if he wanted to, just as Bruce got to punish Loki.

Though Thor took the amulet almost daintily, he smashed it against the wall with such force that one if the beams still left standing cracked at the blow. The dark green light died from the edges of his eyes and hair and he kept his arm out for support until he could catch his breath.

Loki was having no such luck but he had at least stopped squealing. A limp toy wasn't much fun to throw around, however, and just in case the Hulk looked for another victim, Thor called for his hammer. He approached the beast carefully, angered and lost himself.

How many times could he keep falling for Loki's lies?

He'd been played the fool.

In Alessa's opinion, everyone involved had been stupid about Loki. Stupid for not killing him for treason in the first place. Stupid for believing he was dead. Stupid for not being able to tell the difference between their king and dead prince.

She allowed the Hulk to keep thrashing around the limp Asgardian as she picked up a single shard of mirror from the floor, ignoring how her twisting monstrous corpses stood unsteadily on their feet, their weapons raised with no one to attack.

"Bruce, you can just put him in here. I'll make sure he pays properly."

She left a thumbprint on her shard before floating closer to the thrashing Hulk.

"Bruce?"

Smash smash smash.

"Bruce, it's over."

Smash smash smash smash.

But the Hulk seemed to get the message because it finally cracked Loki over one massive knee before throwing him into the ground.

Then it arched its back, letting out a loud, furious roar that shook the palace and caused dust to rain down from the cracks overhead.

Tony had no idea what was going on and it was starting to really piss him off. It was bad enough to have lost the last few days, worse to have big old chunks of memories just missing and absolutely crazy to have to sit all of this out on his first remembered day of being on an alien planet.

He felt like he was missing out and sat glumly with Heimdal and a good portion of the non-warlike population of Asgard while they all sniffled or pouted as well because their mothers wouldn't allow them to run off into battle.

He was going home, he decided, and making a new set of armor because this was ridiculous. Tony Stark did not sit out on the fun!

Of course, how much fun could it possibly be with the city going to ruin?

It wasn't until the all clear was sounded that Alessa and Thor, Bruce in his arms and covered in his cloak, returned. Tony jumped immediately to his feet. "Is he all right?!"

All hope for his affection towards Banner wasn't entirely gone.

Alessa was carrying Bruce's glasses, since she guessed he would probably want to keep those. She had given Thor a brief rundown of what had happened with Tony's curse, just so he wouldn't be confused to see them acting strangely around each other.

"He beat Loki unconscious and then passed out, so... I think so." At the very least, he wasn't hurt. Not on the surface. "I think he'll be better if we put him in a bed and let him sleep." It occurred to her that they'd probably need new rooms. Tony might have questions about sharing a bed with his 'friend.'

Bruce, for his part, was probably in the deepest sleep he'd had since walking out of Silent Hill. There were no nightmares. No visions of dismembered children, no screaming mothers, no blood on the asphalt, nothing. There was just sleep.

It was probably the first time he actually looked somewhat peaceful in sleep for a long time.

"Did he hurt anyone besides Farrah?" Tony asked anxiously, not that Alessa could get the reference to the actress and Loki's feathered hair. It was important to Bruce not to be a monster. It was important to Bruce not to have any more blood on his hands.

Wisely, Tony wasn't going to ask after Loki's current state. Thor could deal with that and he didn't really care. Loki did this to him and did this to Banner too.

He wasn't sure why Alessa let them walk into a city with one of their craziest enemies running it, but he could talk to her about it later. Getting Bruce home was more important. He was going to have to see if Thor would let him vacation here next summer though.

"He punched Thor into another room and flattened some corpses, but I don't think anyone's holding it against him."

She highly doubted Thor was resentful of being smacked, and it wasn't like the corpses cared about anything anymore.

There would probably be conversations about who got Loki. She didn't trust the Asgardians to deal with him as he should be dealt with. She didn't even trust them to keep him out of trouble.

But that would come later. Instead, she followed Thor. "He'll be okay. He just let off steam." A lot of steam. Seriously, if she weren't a hellish abomination, she would have probably been vaguely unnerved.

Alessa did seem to favor more torment than pulp when it came to punishment but Tony wouldn't hold that against anyone right now. He just wanted to get back. Banner would be out for an hour if he was lucky and that should be just enough time to get him in bed and brew a cup of tea to be waiting for him.

Thor was silent for the most part, quietly directing Heimdal where his friends ought to go before turning back to the ruins of the palace. It had been difficult for the Thunderer to give Loki up but it would be worse for him to sit on the throne until Odin woke from his Odin-sleep.

Jane would be angry with him.

Tony hadn't managed to get a word in about that hypothetical vacation before he was standing right in the middle of the street with the projection of a little girl and Bruce Banner swaddled in a cape at his feet.

"JESUS!" He might not be religious but New York City streets weren't the sort to just appear in!

Alessa (as usual) was pretty unfazed. She ignored how a lot of people took double-takes and stared at the naked man wrapped in a cape.

"How conspicuous do you think it'd be for me to just float him with us?"

Regardless of how they got him to the tower, he was eventually tucked into bed. An email was waiting for Tony, sent by a throwaway account from an internet cafe in Maine.

Cheryl and I will be visiting you soon.

Tell Alessa to expect us.

Bruce wouldn't wake up in an hour. Or two. Or three.

He had utterly exhausted himself, more than any other transformation Tony had seen.

Despite nearly getting run over and having Bruce puppetted around behind them as they rushed to the sidewalk and finding absolutely none of Bruce's things in the room he tended to use when he came back to the States, Tony was much more distracted by the email and who the sender might be. He'd met Cheryl briefly, he did remember being in a house with a shotgun pointed at his head while his breath crystalized in front of his lips. Could the Order have gotten to her?

And if it did, what did it mean for Nat and Clint undercover? Could this be related?

With his headset on and JARVIS on text-only, Tony set up a workstation in the corner of the room Banner slept in, frowning at the encryptions. It didn't seem possible to have so many layers of coding within each layer of code. He liked the smarts, but when he couldn't break the code in over two hours, he was worried.

How many holes were in his brain?

Alessa briefly considered removing all of Bruce's clothes and toiletries from Tony's room.

Then she figured that they'd need something to start the conversation so she left it as it was.

She flitted around, dragging JARVIS bear with her and telling him about the trip to Asgard. He would probably be able to show Tony recordings of all the memories he missed that took place in the tower, but in a rare moment of tact, she decided to let Bruce talk to him about it before shoving those recordings in his face. Then she got Valtiel to give her body up (that had been annoyingly difficult, since he kept holding and caressing it and he seemed utterly wounded that she had neutralized the piece of goddess inside of her, though he insisted that she was still his goddess) and laid it on her medical cot. It didn't occur to her to put it in the room Tony had given her. It didn't quite feel like hers yet.

Then she nestled JARVIS bear in the crook of her body's arm. She felt his fur. The hardness under the soft that indicated machinery.

She opened the windows to let the sun wash over her hand and stomach. She would never admit it, but her body began to shudder and cry.

In the confusion after the battle, she had gone back to Odin's room and taken the ball that she had found in the magic store. She was fascinated by the woman inside. She put the ball next to the bed on top of a machine that finally didn't have to be attached to her.

Then she went to Bruce's room to see Bruce still dead asleep and Tony fussing with a computer.

"He's still not awake?"

Tapping his fingers on the desk where an LED keyboard had just vanished beneath his hand, Tony shook his head. He had been looking at Bruce, face more expressive now that he was asleep. It took a few long moments to turn his attention to Alessa. It was silly, but he patted the edge of Bruce's bed anyway so that the projection could sit.

"Not yet. I'm not much of an expert on his transformations." No, he just designed the equipment that the government and SHIELD had used for years to spy on him. "It only took an hour after the last time he did that, though." Of course, Bruce hadn't just lost his boyfriend the last time.

He sighed, letting his shoulders relax some.

"I got an email." Yes, he was keeping his voice low. "Your other half will be joining us soon," he said. "I kind of wanted to introduce your body to Extremis before we got visitors but it can't be helped. And I think she's bringing a plus one."

His eyes stole slowly towards Bruce again.

"We use to be friends," he muttered. "I don't know how I finally managed to piss him off."

Alessa wasn't sure how to react to that. She slowly lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, smoothing her skirt as she looked down at Bruce. "I hope she's happy with her life."

It's not something she'd admit to everyone, but Cheryl was special. It meant something to create life, to hold something so small and innocent and vulnerable and yours in your arms, and to leave them by a road and pray that they would have what you never did.

But of course, Cheryl would have suffered. The Order would have seen to it. Alessa's own mistakes would have seen to it.

Hopefully, her 'plus one' wasn't a part of the Order.

But Alessa didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to think about the baby she gave to the man who walked through hell for her other half.

"You're still friends. Bruce isn't mad." She was still smoothing her skirts, but she was more comfortable with this conversation. It was easier to deal with other people's issues than her own. "He's just... really hurt. And he doesn't want to show it."

He was still self centered. Though he had gotten good at reading Alessa, that didn't mean that what was on his mind was entirely her. Well no. That wasn't true. She was the biggest thing on his mind because she was all he could remember of the last few weeks.

It was hard for him to pinpoint anything. His memory just kept fuzzing over with each breath he watched Bruce take.

"Hurt? What did I do?" How do you apologize for something you couldn't even remember? What was the gift for that?

Bruce was still as death, save for the rise and fall of his chest. His face was creased with a slight frown, but otherwise, there were no overt signs of distress.

"You didn't do anything. It's not your fault."

If Tony asked her, she would tell him everything. Tell him what he forgot, tell him how he would stare at Bruce like he was the only person in the room and how Bruce would pretend it didn't make him the happiest he's been in years.

She wouldn't bring it up on her own, though. She didn't understand love. It wasn't something she brought up.

"He just doesn't want to talk about it because he thinks you'll get upset."

"Alessa, let me tell you something." He switched from his chair to the bed beside the girl while Bruce slept on. He couldn't officially take her hand but he tried, just like he always did. "When it comes to friendships, most of them are absolutely worthless. There's just one way you can tell if it isn't... Being able to tell another person absolutely anything and having them accept and love you anyway is the only thing that matters. When you find someone like that, you don't let them go. Banner's not figured out yet that I can be that person for him, but that's okay."

He made a little show of squeezing the bit of heat that represented the girl's hand. His eyes were sincere. Tired. More than a little lost. But though Tony couldn't remember that Bruce had become his everything, it didn't seem to matter.

Tony was still fiercely loyal to Banner.

"I'll just have to make him understand that it doesn't matter, right?"

The corners of Alessa’s lips twitched.

Then they made a tiny, sincere smile. No crooked edge, no malice in her eyes, nothing. Just a smile.

She reached out one hand, miming smoothing his hair out of his face, leaving lingering warmth where she ‘touched.’ She had a feeling the two of them would be okay. “Maybe he just needs a reminder. Ask him about it when he wakes up. Tell him I say he’s being stupid if he tries to dodge it.”

For some reason, he seemed to listen to criticism most when it came from Alessa. From the mouth of babes?

“And try not to freak out if you’re surprised.”

Freak...out? Now he was curious. Well, more curious. Might as well call him Alice at this point. "You're killing me, Lessy, you know that right? I don't do well with all of these secrets."

When Alessa left and his decryption codes were working through JARVIS and a few different programs he cobbled together, Tony flopped down on his back next to Bruce and used holographic lights in the wall to shine all of the details on Extremis over his face. He needed to review notes, not sleep, but just in case he did sleep, he wanted Bruce waking up to wake him up too.

There would be no creeping out of this bed for Banner. Not without some explanations first!

Bruce, all together, slept for six hours. The day, and all it entailed, had thoroughly exhausted him.

When he woke up, he immediately winced at the light on his face and rolled over. He attempted to say something along the lines of ‘Tony, I told you I’m not your desk’, but it came out more like an unhappy, “Mmmph.”

The relatively unfamiliar bed reminded him: he wouldn’t be waking up with Tony anymore.

Then why was he…?

Bruce looked over his shoulder at Tony, fully clothed, and furrowed his brow. “What happened?” His head was fuzzy. It always was after… right, right, he had transformed, and Thor and Alessa and Loki were there, and... “Did I hurt anyone?” Loki notwithstanding.

It was Bruce's standard question and that was why Tony had needed to know that first. He lifted a hand to bookmark his spot in a journal SHIELD had leaked (thanks again, Natasha) and then let his arm lay over his stomach. His smile was soft. Tired. At least being an insomniac allowed him to have a better grip on his exhaustion than most people.

"I heard Thor's not as dead as we all thought brother got readily trounced," Tony grinned. "And there were a few Thor shaped holes in the wall but you did good, kid. Saved the day. Me, on the other hand? I got to hang out with the non-warrior women and kids. Thanks for that by the way."

His smile softened and then faded.

"Made you tea like...five hours ago. I'm gonna go with it being frigid right now. I can make you some more. Don't run away." He gave Bruce what he assumed was a meaningful look before he climbed out of bed and grabbed the mug. Cold, as expected. He needed to invent some sort of tea heat stabilizer that wouldn't cause it to over steep.

Bruce let out a sigh of relief before settling against the pillows. Everything hurt. Everything always hurt after the big guy made an appearance. Bodies were not supposed to contort and change like that, and it left him feeling like he had been hit by a truck.

He considered trying to run when Tony left, but he dismissed the notion quickly as childish. Instead, he forced his achy muscles to work with him to crawl out of bed and get dressed. He didn’t want to talk to Tony while naked. It made him feel vulnerable and brought up far too many memories. He still was reeling from everything ending so suddenly, but he was doing his best to suppress his feelings until he had time to deal with them on his own.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, completely clothed by the time Tony came back. He took the mug Tony offered, giving a soft thanks before giving it a careful sip. He was tempted to just chug it, but it was never a good idea to wolf down things after waking up post-incident. It could make him sick if he drank too fast.

“I’m guessing Loki is put away? Is everyone okay?” He was guessing that it was all dealt with, if they were back on Earth, but he was hoping to get filled in and avoid the topic Tony was probably planning on bringing up.

Yeah, Tony had a question about those clothes. He'd found none in Bruce's usual room and when he'd gone to his own closet to fish out something for the other scientist to wear, he'd noticed a lot of neutral toned jackets and shirts and trousers on the side Pepper's massive collection of business dresses and pant suits use to occupy. And in Pepper's old drawers? Why, there were men's boxers too.

Tony didn't really think much of it and he assumed Bruce's room had been in use by someone else. He couldn't remember but there were reasons for everything.

Armed with a cup of tea, and finding Bruce sitting up, Tony scooted over the rolly chairs towards him, bare feet flung up on the end of the bed by his thigh.

"No one lets me have any fun and no one tells me anything. I've become the old forgotten grandpa of the group. Here, it's hot. From what I can put together, Loki's vanquished and Asgard is safe. I promised Alessa a ship evidently but we were spirited away before I could make good on that."

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